Thai Basil – Richmond Hill

Thai Basil was highly recommended to me when I was looking for a good Thai restaurant in the east end. So I was excited to trying this authentic restaurant for lunch with my friend.

Based on the reviews, I was a little nervous thinking Thai Basil would be packed on a Saturday afternoon. We got there at 1pm and to our relief it was not packed at all. There was a steady customer flow.

What a nice little restaurant – stylish and clean. It was a bit loud even though there weren’t a lot of customers, giving an ambience of not too much privacy. Authenticity is a very important requirement for me in restaurants. The waitresses were Thai and I am sure the chefs are Thai as well. Great service as well. The waitresses are very, very nice.

Thai Basil’s lunch menu is quite a deal with every item basically under $10.00. Each lunch item included lemongrass soup and a spring roll. I enjoyed the lemongrass soup, it had a nice sourness and spice which I didn’t find overbearing. I have not tried lemongrass soup before so I am not able to make a comparison to see if this was above average. I really liked it though. The spring roll was a little small, crispy and pretty standard. So far, we are off to a good start.

I ordered the Thai Chili Eggplant with Minced Pork. The presentation was very attractive and colourful with lots of veggies, the noodles were the flat rice noodles, and the serving was very generous. The dish was very clean and non-greasy. This noodle dish is normally a triple spicy dish, but I requested mild with the hot sauce on the side. I love spicy food but since I’ve never been to this restaurant before I wasn’t sure how spicy their food would be so I better play it safe. Now that I’ve tried my noodles, I think in the future I will be ordering the food without modifying the hot sauce, maybe just bring it down one notch. I think they may have Canadian-ized the taste for our western taste buds. It was still very good nonetheless. I brought the leftovers home which my daughter ate and she really liked it.

My friend ordered the Thai Green Curry Chicken. She substituted the rice for noodles for a dollar extra. The presentation of her food was not as nice looking as my dish, it was just white and colourless. The serving was a good size too as they gave lots of chicken. (Their lunch menu seems to be such a great deal). I tried a bit of the green curry sauce and also thought it was mild. I basically thought it was okay, but my friend thought it had too much of a coconut flavor. I am not sure if she enjoyed it too much. She is Trini/Chinese so she is accustomed to very flavourful tastes. This was probably too mild for her.

We shared a dessert – Sticky Coconut Rice with Mango for $4.95. At other Thai restaurants, this dessert is usually enough for two. So when the waitress brought out our dessert I was a little disappointed that the serving was small, meant only for one person. It was fine for now as this gave us a sampling of their Sticky Coconut Rice dessert. It was decent, not the best I’ve had – I thought there were some hard bits in the rice.

They also charged for hot tea – paid for the cup, hot water refills are no charge.

Overall, I personally enjoyed Thai Basil. Great service, nice looking interior, good, safe food. I would like to come again with my daughter and try other things on the menu. Their presentation of the food is so pretty. I think I would rate it 3.7/5.

(Ackk! I can’t find my photo of the Coconut Rice and Mango… Must’ve deleted by accident).